DAVE MUSTAINE: All I Wanted For My Son Was For Him To Know God's Word

Musician's Friend recently conducted an in-depth interview with MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Musician's Friend: Are either of your children musically inclined? If so, are there any desires to follow in dad's footsteps as a rock star?

Dave Mustaine: "My son (Justis) plays guitar in the band at the school he goes to. He goes to a Christian Academy and he plays in the worship band there. Which, go figure, Dave Mustaine's kid's playing worship songs! Which I'm very thrilled about, because when he was born, all I wanted was him to be able to know God's word, and be a black belt in the martial arts style that I've been training in, so he could take care of himself and if he's meant to die that he would go to Heaven. Pretty much everything I've wanted out of this kid, he's done. He gets great grades, he's beautiful like his mom, and he actually can play! When we were in Germany he was soundchecking, and we found some peckerhead out there with a video camera taping him. I'm like, 'You ain't getting the exclusive on this kid, guy!' We nabbed the camera. The drummer, Shawn Drover's son, his name is Ryan, was playing drums and Justis was up there jamming on guitar.

"Now, Elektra, my daughter, plays piano, and she's got a really good voice, but she's still seven, so a lot of that is just seven-year-old, childlike, angelic singing. Most really young children, when they sing, sound angelic and as soon as they cross that little imaginary line of puberty their voice starts to sound like two cats having sex in an alley!"

Musician's Friend: Back in December, we were all stunned by the senseless loss of Dimebag Darrell. From the statements you've made since, it's apparent that you were not only touched by his passing, but by the life he led as well, and it encouraged you to extend an olive branch to some people that you haven't had the best relationships with. I was wondering if anyone has taken you up on that offer?

Dave Mustaine: "No. That whole thing, those difficulties, they go both ways. It wasn't necessarily that either one of the parties had a problem with the other — it was pretty much mutual. So, a lot of it could be, people are busy. I'm sure I'm not the center of their universe, where they want to read what I post. They may not even know that I'm desirous of clearing the air. But the bottom line for me is my side of the street's clean now."

Musician's Friend: Have there been any changes on this tour as far as security goes as a result of what happened to Dime?

Dave Mustaine: "Not really. You know, we still have standard protocol for what we do when we play and how the fans are treated. I think if you treat your fans really well, you stand less of a chance of any kind of backlash. I don't really know what motivated that psychotic killer to take Darrell's life, other than the scuttlebutt we've all heard — blaming Darrell for breaking up PANTERA. See the thing is, there's always going to be somebody somewhere that loves you, and you don't know about it. There is always somebody somewhere that wants you to die, and you don't know about it. And the beauty is, when you live your life like Darrell was living, and the way I'm trying to live mine now, you come across the paths of more people that love you than ones that want you to die. Even if you do cross paths with someone that wants you to die, if you're living your life in a way where you treat others the way they want to be treated, sometimes they may change their mind about wanting you to die and just maybe wanting you to get beat up really bad (laughs)."